In recent years, Tennessee education leaders have expressed concern over stagnant or declining college enrollment rates and a weak education-to-workforce pipeline.1 According to the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, only 26 percent of Tennessee students who started high school in 2012 earned a postsecondary degree by summer 2022, with even lower percentages for students of color over the same time period.1,2 Alarms were sounding.
Suzanne Donovan, executive director of the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP) Institute, and Vanessa Coleman, co-director of SRI’s Center for Education Research & Innovation, recently sat down for a conversation with Kori Hamilton Biagas to discuss scaling innovations that disrupt inequity and create system-level change.
What do high school graduates need to know and be able to do to be prepared for college and career? This is the fundamental question that state policy makers confront when determining minimum high school graduation requirements or assessing whether these requirements need to change to meet the needs of a rapidly evolving economy.
New performance data gets released. Without even seeing the data, what would you predict is the pattern? For over 20 years, since No Child Left Behind, we have seen the same, predictable performance differences. And for over 20 years, there’s been a desire to quickly compare data points, find bright spots and challenges, craft a narrative, and decide on next steps.
One objective within our Equitable Pathways to College and Career team is to highlight projects and initiatives that weave equity-driven practices into the fabric of our work. One such initiative is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF)—NSF’s Eddie Bernice Johnson INCLUDES Initiative (NSF INCLUDES).
Many students today have experienced waves of trauma—from the pandemic, opioid crisis, racial injustice, poverty, inequality, violence, and more. Many, if not all, students and families are affected, and schools play a central role in providing critical supports.
Thinking critically, working collaboratively, communicating effectively, learning how to learn—these are the types of deeper learning competencies that students will need to master to be successful in the rapidly evolving future of work and citizenship.
Finishing more years of high school, and especially earning a diploma, is associated with a decreased risk of premature death, increased prospects for employment, and a higher lifelong earning potential.
As foundations grapple with how to advance equity, many are seeking to reimagine learning and evaluation in their grantmaking.
Getting and using feedback from students themselves about their school experiences is key to understanding school climate. But how do school and district leaders know which measures to use?
The imperatives facing public education right now, given all the issues laid bare by the pandemic and centuries of barriers systemically rooted in racism and White supremacy, require complex, intentional, equity- and relationally driven partnership approaches.
“What does the research say?” Educators ask and are asked this question frequently. Appropriately, professionals are encouraged to look to the evidence base when they encounter a problem of practice.
Researchers from SRI and the University of Oklahoma are collaborating to create a new assessment tool to help educators ensure that students with significant cognitive disabilities (or extensive support needs) leave high school with the skills they need to be successful.
When a group of West Virginia educators set a goal of doubling the number of STEM college graduates statewide in a decade, they faced long odds.
Although nationally Latinx students declare majors in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields at similar rates as White students, our postsecondary education systems lose Latinx students along the way, resulting in disproportionately fewer Latinx STEM majors and degree holders.